Mar 6 2014:
Rajan, as I read the description online of CCE, there are two dimensions of the CCE that seem separate and unrelated. One is the replacement of a single end of year exam with formative and summative assessment throughout the year. I cannot tell you which countries in Europe test this way but I know that the United States does and long has. It makes a great deal of sense for teacher and student to know throughout the year what the student understands and what needs further work and also to have a more robust picture through many measures than a single end-of-year test can provide.

This is not to say having a final exam could not be *one* of the measurements taken, but it would be hard to defend a lack of useful growth-promoting feedback throughout the year.

The other aspect of what I read about CCE I understand less. Is there a component that involves measuring various student strengths such as attentiveness, leadership, and so forth *in place of* mastery of academic skills such as mathematical reasoning, data interpretation in science, or analytical writing and then aggregating these measures so that no one other than the individual teacher knows which were the students strengths and weaknesses?

In this respect, when I taught secondary school, we did assign marks for academic performance and additional marks for effort and for ctizenship. We did not combine them. This process gives a cleaner picture of what a student has demonstrated he knows and is able to do. The academic mark includes many measures taken throughout the year, including work done in class and at home, individually and in teams.